


"Dagger" Is My Middle Name

by DwarvenGatorade



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, F/M, Gen, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, rationalfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22313200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenGatorade/pseuds/DwarvenGatorade
Summary: Years before the events of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (a movie some have called "the greatest of all time"), a dedicated smith has some explaining to do regarding a certain ludicrously implausible dagger.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	"Dagger" Is My Middle Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhatWouldEnderDo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatWouldEnderDo/gifts).



> As requested: (more or less... ;) )
> 
> "a rationalfic one-shot from the perspective of WHOEVER THE F*** MADE THE DAGGER, AND WHY, AND WHAT THEY WERE THINKING AT THE TIME, AND WHAT THEY WERE EXPECTING TO ACTUALLY HAPPEN DOWNSTREAM OF THEIR ACTIONS, AND WHAT IN THE HELL COULD THEIR GOAL HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN"

The dagger smith ground down another layer of allumoid metal. Sparks briefly illuminated the dimly lit work chamber. Dust, grime, scorches, and scars had transformed the once chromica-white floor, walls, and ceiling into something approximating a war zone.

Hanging on hooks, sitting on shelves, piled into the corner, were the tools of the dagger smith’s trade. Vices, saws, sanders, grinders; blowtorches, soldering irons; microscopes, mesoscopes, meaningscopes; kits for chemistry, metallurgy, alchemy, harmetiology, and the application of Force; a meditation mat, a solar chart of lost constellations, a leather bound prayer book authored by Ajunta Pall, a holo-player loaded with droid-rendered prophecies; a custom lamp equipped with various carcinogenic settings, a trash can full of dead mice, a forbidden device for generating, handling, and destroying very small black holes; a canister of Rue Kapali’s 100% natural no-additive dagger flakes; and a rusty red oboe.

A click from the door, a light from the hall. The dagger smith jumped from her seat, dagger tight in hand.

“Well, well, well. You’re home after all. Don’t you know when to quit?” Illuminated from behind was her angel. Blonde locks hanging low, body angular and right beneath his form-fitting uniform. Her angel, whom she could not allow to die.

“Fabian! I —” the dagger smith coughed, voice tight and dry from disuse.

“You’re working. In the dark. Again. On your horrible, stupid dagger.”

The dagger twitched in her hand. _Don’t mind him my sweet key, he doesn’t understand._ “I love you. I treasure you. You’re angry with me.”

The dagger smith’s eyes adjusted to the lighting, and she caught Fabian’s glare. _Damn right I’m angry with you!_

“Okay. Let’s talk this out.” She stood, waved for Fabian to come in, offered him her chair. She let the dagger hang by her side, though she did not loosen her grip.

Fabian held his ground at the door. “You promised me you’d be finished with this dagger in six weeks —”

“And —”

“And it’s been three months! I get that you’re obsessive about your craft Renesmee, —”

Her sacrificed name burned in her ears. “Fabian please, I —”

“— but this dagger is killing you! You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you don’t even say hello to me when I come home. And for what, a handful of credits?”

 _More than a handful._ The 50,000 credits in the contract were just the beginning. Once the Dark Lord of the Sith saw the magnificence and exquisite perfection of this dagger, untold work and wealth were sure to follow.

“It’s not about the money, Fabe. It’s never been about the money.”

“What then, fame? Are you so desperate to make a name for yourself that you’d sacrifice everything — sacrifice _us_ — on the altar of your ego?”

 _No, no, he was twisting it all wrong._ Yes, being known as the High Sith Smith was a dream of hers since her conversion. To craft relics so ominous, so charged with negative energy, that fools would say they had been wrought by the Force itself. 

But how could Fabian not see…

She stepped toward him. “This is so much bigger, if you just let me—”

“Oh don’t try and make this about your hokey old religion —”

“You’re about to die, Fabian!” She hadn’t meant to shout. Or tense up like that. Or point the dagger menacingly at his heart. The look of horror on her beloved’s face, the fear pinning him to the doorframe... it was gut-wrenching.

“I’ve seen a vision,” the dagger smith said. “Explosions, debris. Bodies everywhere. Flames.” She took a step back, carefully placed the dagger on the workbench.

“I don’t know how, or why, only that it comes soon. Too soon. That is why I seek favor with the Sith, with their evil religion, their dark science.” She folded her hands, pleading. “To save you.”

Fabian stared at her. Touched. Wary. Skeptical.

“And,“ she added, “it is finished. The dagger is complete.”

“Really? You just completed it, just now.”

She nodded. There were finishing touches she had planned, but holding it now, the dagger felt right _._ It felt _ready_.

Her angel raised an eyebrow, but gave her a game smile. “Show me.”

They rearranged the workroom to make for a more comfortable viewing experience. The dagger smith cleared the scrap metal off an overstuffed armchair tucked away in the corner. Fabian went out to the living room and came back with a “normal friggin’ lamp.” She ignored the last of the tension and kissed him; his arms wrapped around, and held her safe and tight. _My angel still loves me._

“This,” the dagger smith said, leaning against her workbench, “is my masterpiece.”

In his armchair, Fabian weighed the dagger in his hands, examined its blade and its form. “Is it?” he asked.

She hit him with a throw pillow.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! It just looks a little... unusual I guess.”

“Of course it does! It’s not some simple shiv for stabbing pimps and thieves.” She huffed and crossed her arms. “What’s unusual about it?”

“Well the giant wavy blade, for one. It looks like a Spirit’s Eve toy.”

She grinned mischievously. “You underestimate its chances.”

“And there’s some sort of meaningless scribbles engraved on here. That’ll wear down to nothing in like a month.”

The dagger smith looked off smugly. “Oh if you only knew...”

“And this is what, a protractor?”

“Give me that!” She snatched the dagger from him and tucked the retractable protractor back into the hilt. Smoothing her hair back, the dagger smith took a centering breath. “I clearly didn’t give you the context necessary to appreciate this piece.”

Fabian leaned back in his armchair, hands laced behind his head. Even with that self-satisfied smirk plastered across his face, he was beautiful. “Enlighten me.”

“The first thing you need to understand is that this is not a dagger. It is a map, and it is a key.”

“Then why is it a dagger?”

She shushed him furiously. “The engraving upon the blade is a location, and a riddle. In Sith it reads: ‘ของจั กรพรรดินั้น ถูกผนึกไว้ในห้องใต้ดิ นของจักรพ รรดิที่พ-ร-ร ดิที่ชั่วค ร-า-ว ที่บนด บ-บ ที่บนดวงจันทร์เร่ร่อน ใบมี ดนี้เท่านั้นที่ บอก’”

“Creepy.”

“Translated, that says, ‘The Emperor's Wayfinder is sealed inside the Imperial vaults at Gamma-9-9 transient 6-5-4 bearing 2-2 on a vagrant moon. Only this blade tells.’”

Confusion on Fabian’s face. “Gamma-9-9 transient 6-5-4... those are _our_ coordinates! You engraved _today’s_ coordinates for the _Death Star_ on an ornate Sith dagger?”

She shook her head with a knowing smile. _Watch,_ she mouthed, and held the engraving so he could observe. After a somewhat awkward minute and a half, it happened: a barely audible _scritch_ , and within the engraving, a single ‘skwig’ changed to a ‘skwug’.

“Gamma-9-9 transient 6-5-5,” she read. “Seems like the Death Star is on the move.”

She had hoped Fabian would leap backward in shock, possibly toppling the armchair and banging his perfect head against the wall. She had to settle for his “impressed whistle.” “How did you pull _that_ off?”

“Midichloribots in the allumoid. They’re keyed to the Force signature of the wayfinder, and entrained to modify the engraving to communicate its coordinates and general location. In riddle form, of course.”

“That’s...” he trailed off. “Well, I would have said that’s impossible, but I just witnessed it. So I’ll have to go with a combination of ‘weird powercreep bro,’ and ‘that’s insanely overengineered for a dagger.’”

“‘Overengineered?’ No no, that’s just the thing! The locational updating is crucial for the dagger’s function, just like the blade shape and protractor—“ She pulled him up from the chair by one hand and pressed the dagger into his other hand. “Here, hold it up to the ceiling, there, with the sketches.”

“Why would I — you know what, okay.” Fabian took the dagger and held it above his head. He stared at her with a confused look.

“Look at it! Look... _through_ it. Up. And pull the protractor back out.”

Now he was giving her a look that said _you’ve gotta be kidding me._

“Just do it!”

With mock care, Fabian pulled out the protractor and stared past the dagger, at her close-up sketch of the Death Star. She sidled up next to him, adjusted his elbow, moved the dagger slightly…

“Huh. You matched the outline of the blade to the silhouette of the ship. With the turrets and bay doors and stuff. And the curved part goes with the laser reservoir slash decorative crater. Neat.” He lowered the dagger, and tucked the protractor away. “That’s... substantially less impressive than the intelligent morphing metal, but —”

“They are one in the same!” the dagger smith said. “For I did not create this edge’s shape...” She paused for dramatic effect, and waved the dagger mysteriously. “It created _itself_.”

“Well that’s stupid,” Fabian said.

She made an offended scoff.

He held his palms out apologetically. “What do you expect me to say? You’re telling me that these microscopic psychic bladebots contorted the dagger to match the outline of a particular section of this massive starship from some random angle, so that what, whatever Sith jackass ends up running around with the knife can look at it and be all ‘whoa’?”

“First off,” she said, ticking off her points with her fingers, “rude. Second, it’s not just any section of the ship: it’s the exact location of the wayfinder, wherever that may be. Third, anyone with an ounce of Force-sensitivity can _feel_ the right angle and vantage point to look from. And fourth —”

She stopped herself. She had already said too much. The Emperor had sworn her to secrecy. What was she doing telling Fabian? But then, if she couldn’t trust him, had she already sacrificed their relationship on the altar of the dagger?

“And fourth? Tell me what’s fourth, Renesmee.”

Like nails on a chalkboard.

“Don’t call me that,” she muttered — then spoke on without restraint. “ _Fourth_ is that it won’t _be_ some _Sith jackass_ . It will be a moth corrupted by flame, a fly lured in by a spider,“ — _a daughter of light darkened, a blade of laser broken by a blade of evil — “_ an enemy of the Empire drawn in by bait upon bait, a trail of dark clues that goodness cannot track,” — _just like the voices said, just like the prophecy —_ “the tongue of the Sith, the stain of blood, the throne of power, the planet of ultimate death!”

The dagger smith felt a quivering in her legs. The dagger was held aloft. The lamplight flickered. Fabian gazed at her, eyes wide, in what must have been awe.

He held out placating hands. “Renesmee, put down the dagger —”

“Silence!” With a hand she swept his foolishness aside, and he slammed against the wall. She gazed at her hand in wonder. “Ha! It’s working, don’t you see? It’s _working!_ All the sacrifices, the obsession, the ludicrously convoluted schemes — I have attracted the gaze of the Dark Side! I can save you, save _us,_ save us all! The power of the Force flows through me!”

“Renesmee!” He shouted, arm outstretched.

“Call me,” she growled, “ _the dagger smith._ ”

She lunged forward, dagger tight in her grip. It felt as if the blade was wielding _her_ , thrusting her toward her angel, to save him once and for all, to make sure he could never be anything but hers —

— a reaction, hands grasping, a struggle —

— and the cold feeling of allumoid pierced her gut.

 _Fear. Anger. Hatred._ She could see it now. Fabian’s face was tortured with it. “No no no. Stupid, stupid! Why did you have to be so _stupid_ , Renesmee?”

 _Coldness. Emptiness. Grief._ She felt nothing and everything all at once. Tears. On his face. Her angel was crying. They were both on their knees. He tangled one hand into her hair, while the other held the hilt of the dagger.

“What...” _happened?_ she asked.

Through sobs, he spoke. “You threw it all away, you thought you could control it, you —“ a sudden brief laugh, sunbeam in storm “— you never did know when to quit.”

“Ha, not...” _that again._ Always trying to balance her out. Her angel still loved her.

His eyes flicked down to the dagger in his hand, and he flinched with disgust. “I’ll destroy it, Renesmee. I won’t let this _thing_ kill anyone else.”

She coughed, red mist, like seeing her breath on a cold morning. “You —” _can’t? Have to?_ One final choice…

 _A blade of laser broken by a blade of evil..._ only _,_ that wasn’t quite it, was it? The prophecy? It was more like... _A blade of laser, broken, by way of a blade of evil..._ the words were shifting in her mind, the Force was trying to _tell_ her, only this blade tells, of course... _A broken Jedi, by way of an evil dagger, darkens the corrupting flame, lures the spider to its ultimate death…_

“— have to — take it!”

Raw shock twisted his features.

Renesmee breathed deep through the pain. “Get off the ship... take it to... my brother...”

“Your brother _the teenage bounty hunter?!”_

 _Yes..._ she nodded. _“_ Do it for me... for the Force... for the _hsss_ —“ the pain crested, her breath hissed out of her.

“For the _Sith_?” he whispered in disbelief.

She stared into Fabian’s eyes. They were like the void between the stars, like nothings between her and his soul. There was a fleck of silver in one of his golden irises. How had she never noticed before?

“ _For the Jedi.”_

Renesmee slid backward, off the blade, and crumpled on the floor. Fabian sprawled over her body, shaking, and let the dagger clatter away. Tears commingled with blood.

“For you, Renesmee. For you.”

Thus was forged Ochi’s blade.

FIN


End file.
